You’re about to get intimately familiar with Jonah Haché – heart, soul and beard – as he nuzzles up with his first video release as a solo artist in four years. “Confessions of a depressed thirty-something year old” comes from Haché’s recently released album, that world already ended, baring it all with the quiet desperation of a musician living out his mid-life crisis in a moment of calm before the impending Climate Wars.
Haché is very much known for his abilities as a synthaholic bubble-swilling creative in both the categories of audio and visual (see his work as illuminator supreme BITS, as well as his previous bandcarnations as Les Païens, Get Used To It, Something Delicious and Stephen Lewis & The Big Band of Fun).
Currently undergoing a reinvention as a solo artist, Haché has been combining his technical skills with a re-visitation to some long-shelved materials and, in the case of “Confessions of a Thirty-Something Year Old,” applying those skills by producing his own video. We’re enveloped in darkness, hair follicles, and the bread-and-butter of Haché go-to medium of festival visuals, as he divulges some universal tidbits of the human condition.
Haché explains that he took a hard turn with the video, with a major shift in tone which “touches on some of the thoughts artists who’ve struggled with depression can go through.”
It’s an unsurprising topic for anyone who has lived through the death of democracy, the monetization of our personal information, and a looming fear of glyphosates. We’re also not entirely sure how we feel about Eminem’s performance at the Oscars.
“This is one of the most personal songs I’ve written in years,” says Haché . “Both recording the song and making the music video for it happened very naturally, but actually, the song almost didn’t come out for that very reason.
“Many of the elements visual elements of liquid colors I implemented into this video were put together just a month before the video and as soon as I started editing it together, I knew what to do.”
Haché continues to indulge in his year away from performing, choosing to offer live-streams in place of touring.